Replies to This ADM Discussion

Randall, yes I have used VinSolutions at the last 2 dealerships. I can't see myself using anyone else. Tje system itself is great, but the people make the difference. Anytime I have had a question or an idea to make it better, they have always been there. Please feel free to email me at dshirley@saturnofnorthtexas.com or call my cell at 972.342.8396

Randall, I just checked a beta Market Pricing program that VinSolutions is testing. It's kinda like a mini vAuto. Tells you how your car is priced in the marketplace. Really helpful in pricing cars to sell quicker.

The market has no memory. Yesterdays price is todays history. The only way to establish true fair market value for any high volume commodity is by using a real-time trading exchange where anyone can play. Blue books, black books, or any other color book is just a history book, not a reliable forecast of future value.

For any market to be truly "live" it must be interactive trading like a NASDAQ stock market, not simply between 2 parties on a showroom floor but between many players simultaneously. (unless its electronic on the Internet this would not be possible). I only know of one such auto marketplace but I would be pleased to see any other interesting sites you have in mind.

Nope. none of those. An auto auction lot has essentially only one seller and more than one buyer (to work). True fair market value can only be established when you have many buyers and many sellers competing simultaneously in real-time. 'And even then the value is only good until the next identical product is sold. That's why you need to be looking at a live trading screen just before you buy, trade or sell.

He is getting at....If I look at all of the cars currently in my market area and surrounding area, what they are currently being retailed for and how long they have been selling online (which is where everyone is), plus look at what they are selling for at the auction (which of course is valuable information which is why everyone uses the "books"), its going to give me an "inside" into the market more than ever before.

Looking at the data of all the cars currently being retailed online has truly changed how dealers do business. And the great part is, I can use it to adjust prices today, tomorrow and a week from now. Why? Because prices change and as they change, I will know.

I can adjust my price to "slip" into any pricing position I want. If I want to be ranked price wise in the middle, it will tell me where I need to be at. Priced the lowest, etc.

If its not "live", then I wouldn't call it "live". What I am talking about is "live", As in "now this minute". As you infer quite correctly, the market never stops. Advertised prices are meaningless to me. The only price that counts is the last selling price. (ie: one second ago if that's when the last sale closed). At the moment there is still only one system in the auto business that can provide true real-time market information.

Got it, I see your point. Although, prices online are what drives traffic to stores not what price the person paid in the store. So dealerships need to know where everyone is pricing their cars because its so easy for consumers to look at hundreds of cars and decide where they want to go. Just because someone pays x-amount in a store doesn't mean that changes the market. If it becomes a trend, ie dealers are selling them for that because they need to move them, that also becomes a trend online to drive traffic to their store.

This gives a dealer a "consumers view".

Once a consumer lands on a dealers website or walks into their store, everything changes but until that happens, its all about driving people to their website, calling their store because they saw the price online. Well, price and pictures and comments and..., sorry I digress.

Chris you are absolutely correct. One sale does not make a market. That's why I have previously remarked that true market value can only be determined by live "many to many" transactions (relative to the average volume of any particular commodity of course).

You are also quite correct in saying that if you want to know what prices others are asking then these other tools will do the job. However they don't show the margin between asking prices and actual average transaction prices for today. That depth of information can only come from a live trading screen.

All the major online auctions use a format known as an "English Forward Auction". Each competition (or lot) can have only one seller and any number of buyers, who compete against each other until a set time when the highest bidder wins the auction.

In a commodities trading exchange which uses a format known as a "Continuous Double Auction" you have any number of bids and offers thrown into a central "pot" by both buyers and sellers offering or bidding the same commodities.

In the automotive arena the "many to many" offering truly identical products would be more likely to be brand new cars whereas used cars would not usually be absolutely identical but similar (because of condition, etc).

The point of this is of course to establish true FMV (fair market value) you need direct competition on both sides of the market. Not simply between different buyers but also between different sellers.

All this is possible but so far there is only one such system in the world for heterogeneous commodities such as automobiles. The technology system is known as a Multi Attribute Continuous Double Auction Exchange.

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